StrangeSox

QUOTE (soxfan49 @ Dec 13, 2015 -> 04:10 PM) Teams can find kickers anywhere. Gould was working construction when they signed him. It's apparent that he doesn't have it anymore so whether that's trading him or cutting him, it's time to find someone else. He has played a major role in pissing away chances of making the playoffs. This would seem to undercut your own argument about the possibility of trading him.

QUOTE (soxfan49 @ Dec 13, 2015 -> 03:02 PM) Gould sucks. Weeks ago I said they should trade him (when he was 17/17) and I was told how dumb I am. Who trades for a kicker

Oh well probably for the best longterm

s*** as Gould

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 13, 2015 -> 02:55 PM) Dumb. Ass. Loud. Fans. WOOOOOO

United way is the largest charity in the country

So many penalties

How does the NFL not have pylon cams looking straight down the goal line

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/business...andal.html?_r=0 "some employees" nice of management to pass the buck

Hi, welcome to the conversation! We're talking about job losses for coal miners!

/4chan is more real than real life

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 03:45 PM) I think that's an indictment of the method, not the principle. Of course, with any job training, some people won't make it. But with the right programs, others will. Whereas if you prop those failing businesses, the money is just going towards executives of failing industrial firms' pockets while workers are part of a dying firm's way of keeping wages down. re-training will have some success, the other has none. And the economy as a whole is better with at least some of them transitioning, both due to the ability to move faster into new tech and having fewer people on various welfare programs. Part of the problem is that the jobs they'd be trained for aren't going to be anywhere near where they live. Not a lot of booming new industry in West Virginian coal towns, derelict Midwest factory towns like Flint or old timber towns in Oregon etc. Doesn't mean people can't move but uprooting your whole life and leaving your support structure (friends, families, neighbors) for tentative employment somewhere else isn't an easy task. I don't disagree with what you're saying, it's just that there aren't any easy answers.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 03:05 PM) Job training doesn't really work. Your money would literally better spent just shutting down the coal factories and giving them a bunch of money than giving them "job training" for jobs that won't touch a 45 year old coal miner. Where Should All the Coal Miners Go? The evidence on conventional job re-training programs is unimpressive, which is bad news for the thousands of coal workers who are likely to lose their jobs in the coming years.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:32 PM) I don't disagree, but the same people complaining about how rich certain people are would also complain when those rich people charge them even more for the good, probably more than they could reasonably afford. Exploitation of labor benefits everyone, not just the rich, so I dunno why that's part of the argument about the rich being too rich. Not necessarily. Appalachian coal miners have earned crap wages and worked in terrible conditions for over a century, and their areas are still generally very poor and depressed. Manufacturing in this country has largely disappeared due to cheap overseas labor, taking with it a huge number of attainable, solid middle-class jobs that a couple of generations of Americans relied on. We get cheap electronic trinkets out of it, overall is the average American family more financially stable than they were a generation or two ago? You are also assuming that companies could just raise prices at will, but that doesn't make a lot of sense. If the manufacturing costs of iPhones went up $50 because the workers were paid better and Apple could raise the price to $650, why wouldn't they just raise their price to $650 and make even more money? They're doing their shareholders a disservice if they don't!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:27 PM) i thought it was 10k, but maybe you're right. Point is, most people don't need to worry about it so there's nothing "unfair" about it. It's unfair that the majority of my income and your income is generally taxed at a much higher rate than the income of the very wealthy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:18 PM) Well, we're all "ok" with quite a lot already! "we" are, but I think there's a moral argument to be made that we shouldn't be! The obvious end of that slippery slope is pro-chattel slavery arguments, which people made plenty of along those same exact lines. So there has to be somewhere between "worker collectives in control of the means of production!" and the antebellum South/modern Qatar, and if we're talking about capital concentration, capital mobility, wage exploitation etc it's at least relevant to discuss where we should fall on that line. I'm not saying there's an easy answer there, but saying "things would cost more if we paid people a fair wage!" isn't really a strong argument in my opinion (nor is it even necessarily true because it could also mean that we just have a little less hyper-concentration of wealth!)

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:16 PM) You'd never get caught because you're a nobody. You'd only get caught if you won the main poker tournament with a prize of 10 million or something and then failed to pay taxes on it. Winning $1,500 bucks on the weekend, no one would ever know or find out. You'd definitely get caught at $1500 because the casino sends a form in above a certain amount, $1k I think. I think the IRS would have that mismatch flagged automatically for them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:16 PM) How did they cheat? Both involve you using your after-tax income dollars to make money and then being taxed again. It's the same playing field - everyone has to pay it. And the rich clearly pay MORE of it. The tax code didn't appear on tablets from the sky. Wealthy, powerful people use their wealth and power to protect their wealth and power, and the tax code reflects that. Everyone has to pay capital gains taxes, but most people have so few capital gains that it's not even relevant. Most of us get the overwhelming majority of our money from wage income. eta "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." It's not a bulls*** tax, and eliminating it would be 1) a gigantic tax cut for the wealthy and 2) essentially allow people born wealthy to live their lives free of federal taxes entirely. I wouldn't be conceptually opposed to having some sort of threshold limit for when it kicks in or when it kicks to a higher rate, but again for most people there aren't really any capital gains to speak of so it's not relevant either way.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:08 PM) I guess I don't see $600 as being astronomical, especially in light of what the product allows you to do. And the reality is if those products are made here, they'd cost 3 times that much. Is everyone ok with that? How far down that rabbit hole of "it's okay to exploit foreign labor and the environment because cheap consumer goods" are you willing to go? eta: "astronomical" was hyperbole as petit already said, but it'd be more about comparing production cost versus sale price than some abstract "how much is an iPhone worth" argument if you're discussing using cheap overseas labor to boost profits.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 12:06 PM) Sounds like you have an issue with capital gains taxes. I do to! Ok so that'd be an example of what petit first complained about, that they rigged the system and these guys cheat. It seems like you're basically agreeing with the underlying conclusion but just not the words used to express it? edit or are you arguing against capital gains being taxed at all, because lol

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 11:36 AM) This is nonsense too. What goods do we as Americans buy at "astronomical prices?" Goods in our country are INSANELY cheap given what goes into making them. I mean I have no problem closing any tax loopholes for multi national corps, and i'm totally on board with penalizing companies that use non-American labor/manufacturing (or conversely, heavily benefiting those that do), but that's a different argument. iPhones cost about $200 to manufacture and retail at $600. There's supply chain, design etc. in there, but part of the reason that Apple is so profitable is that they make highly desirable electronics that they can sell at high margins due to cheap labor overseas. They were part of the group of tech companies conspiring to fix wages stateside on the engineering end, too! It's not just on the wages end that they get to cut costs, either. Workers rights, workplace safety and environmental regulations are much, much lower in the places that do most of our manufacturing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 11:33 AM) He chose some poor examples but the study found 70% of uber wealthy people didn't come from wealth. Who cares if they attended elite schools? Maybe they earned that? Ok, so they got lucky with timing. Everyone alive has that same luck. Everyone's playing on the same field at the same time. And are you saying you don't agree with any IP protection? But at the end of the day, the important decisions/breakthroughs/creations/ideas are because of them, solely. Who cares if they needed others or worked with others? End of the day, without Zuckerberg there is no Facebook. Without Gates there is no Microsoft. That's just a bunch of nonsense. Society provided everyone alive at the same time as these guys the same playing field. I'm already on record saying you can tax the piss out of them if you must, I don't mind that at all, but I think it's moronic to claim that 1) these guys aren't self-made and somehow played only a minor role in their success and 2) that they should feel obligated to give back. Do you give back your extra earnings to society? Sure, but you seem to put basically no value on what they've done, as if anyone with a brain could have done it. It's not ALL them, but it's certainly more than luck/timing. 1) On the bolded, then we're pretty much in agreement I think? I guess I don't particularly care if they should "feel obligated" or not if they're being taxed either way. 2) Again, I'm not putting zero value on what they've done or saying they only played a minor role. I'm saying that, by and large, the playing fields weren't level and they had a lot of rolls of the dice go in their favor. There's no Microsoft without Bill Gates, but Microsoft doesn't become the OS juggernaut if Gates' mom isn't on a foundation board with the CEO of IBM. Gates et al still needed to take advantage of these situations and have the right ideas ready when the opportunities presented themselves, of course. 3) Re: level playing field, no, society doesn't provide everyone alive the same opportunity. Most of these guys went to elite schools (Yale, Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, etc.) which can provide you with all sorts of access and connections you wouldn't otherwise have. They were mostly born into upper-middle class or upper class families. Being the son of the Congressman is going to open a lot of doors that someone like you or I wouldn't get through. 4) I'm not against IP protection, but I'm pointing out that it's something created/allowed by society to which they owe the existence of their fortune. That's less true of people like the Waltons than of the tech industry billionaires, obviously. I guess I'm more taking issue with the common "rags/middle class-to-riches" mythos that can surround "self-made" billionaires. They may not have inherited the majority of their fortunes, but they were still born with an awful lot of advantages. There are some true rags-to-riches stories, like Sheldon Adelson, and it's kinda weird that the article didn't highlight those guys in the first place.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 09:50 AM) Carnegie hired pinkertons to massacre women and children who threatened to strike. Ah, the time of the American dream. I don't know what you're arguing against, if anything my point would be closer to "we're sliding into a second Gilded Age" than "man the 19th century and early 20th century were great!" The American Dream is pretty heavily mythologized. Economic mobility has been somewhat low since the 70's now. I'd imagine it improved during the post-war boom but I can't google up good info.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 09:48 AM) We also had zero social net protections at that point. And if the goal of anti-trust laws was to prevent inequality, many of those companies ended up richer. Standard Oil quadrupled its wealth as the sum of their parts were greater than their whole. It was the income tax which accomplished anything remotely like what is being discussed. The consolidation is largely happening in industries where marketshare gains are combatting margin losses. We just prevented STAPLES from merging. Is this accomplishing anything? Well, that and FICA taxes.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Dec 10, 2015 -> 09:47 AM) Hiding money overseas and using cheap labor to make goods to sell to Americans at astronomical prices. If the 19 century rich had the international world we did today, they would do the exact same thing. FWIW they just did that domestically in the 19th century and violently suppressed workers rights/unionization movements with the help of private "detectives agencies" and state and federal law enforcement. We also got the Lochner era in the courts where all sorts of workplace rights and worker protection laws were struck down.